Western front will be ugly politics

The Nine and Seven networks will broadcast their breakfast shows on Monday morning from the Rooty Hill RSL.
Photo: Andrew Meares

by
Phillip Coorey

The battle for western Sydney is looming large – and potentially ugly.

A sizeable media contingent will be making its way to the western suburbs next week and the Nine and Seven networks will broadcast their breakfast shows on Monday morning from the Rooty Hill RSL.

Tellingly, Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott
has changed his plans and will go to the area for at least two days early in the week, determined to gatecrash Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
’s party.

Despite the derision that has been heaped on Gillard from some quarters for sleeping out there as well, the nation will be in no doubt next week of where she will be and what her messages will be – to the extent Abbott needs to insert himself into the show.

Gillard’s messages will be focused on jobs and education, the key issues which burn with voters in the west.

But as any MP will tell you, resentment towards asylum seekers is a big issue out west and events of the past few days suggest we are in for a bout of “reffo bashing" next week.

Opposition immigration spokesman
Scott Morrison
discomfited many on is side, and not just the usual suspects, when he said communities should be informed when asylum seekers were living among them and “mandatory behaviour protocols’’ should be implemented. His call followed the alleged sexual assault of a university student by a Sri Lankan asylum seeker.

Labor and the Greens cried “dog whistle’’ and “racist" and Liberal MPs felt Morrison had gone too far. After all, the Coalition has won that battle.

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Eric Abetz
, the Opposition senate leader, dug the hole deeper when he clumsily lumped together paedophiles and asylum seekers in the same sentence and then tried to extricate himself.

Abbott blamed Gillard for starting it, noting her decision last week to clamp down on 457 visas issued to skilled foreign workers. Rightly or wrongly, the growing use of these visas was causing resentment in western Sydney where manufacturing jobs are vanishing.

“Look, if anyone is guilty of (dog whistling), I would ask you to look at what the government has had to say recently about section 457 visas," Abbott said.

In reply, Gillard said: “Australians getting jobs first is always going to be the Labor plan.’’